It's Simple Yet Effective

How Much ‘Cash’ Are You Throwing Away

Here’s a continuation of another post "GOING GREEN" on saving money through grocery shopping. But rather than just seeing all that food go to waste, we should see exactly what it equates to. We should be seeing how many Washington’s and Lincoln’s we’re tossing out every time we toss out an apple or bag of lettuce.

Go ahead and clean out your fridge when you get home. Take a look and see what you have that floating around in there that is ‘dead’. Whatever looks to be questionable or if it already has that look to it, toss it out. It’s as easy as the saying, “when in doubt, throw it out”. You’ll either have a trash bag full of wasted food or if you're lucky, you’ll only have to toss a thing or two.

Try Tracking It and See How Much You're Truly Wasting

Grab a notepad or use your phone and jot down anything that you toss out.

Old yogurt? Write it down.

Oh, there’s another one? Make that ‘x2’.

Scribble down all the things you toss out and make sure to keep count. If you have produce like salad or an onion, write down how much of it you have left that you tossed out.

Ex. Half an onion or a quarter bag of carrots.

Once you have your complete list, keep it with you. So, the next time you are ready to head to the store, you can see exactly how much you are actually wasting and how much money you're spending on food that you're just going to throw out anyway.

Quantify Your Supply and Make Changes

Next time you go to the store, make sure to bring your list with you. Write down all of the prices for all of the objects you tossed out.

Onions @ $0.99/each x TRASHED: 3/4 of an onion = $0.75

Yogurt @ $1.25 x TRASHED: 2 yogurts = $2.50

Gallon of Milk @ $3.49 x TRASHED: 1/2 gallon = $1.75

In the above example, with just those 3 items, we lost out on $5. Not only was it $5 wasted, but we also wasted food. And if you have ever seen those commercials of people starving in other countries, you can now feel better about yourself that you're not wasting food someone else could have used.

Make Your Trip

Have you written down all the prices you paid for your list? What did it total? More than you had wished, right? It kind of put’s things into perspective when you have a dollar amount tied to the waste you create. I mean you could have went out to dinner with that extra cash right, or better yet, you could have tossed that dough to your debt and turn that waste into haste.

Well now you know some of the things that you can lighten up on. If you tossed out 2 yogurts, just make sure to buy 2 less than you had before. What about that onion? Maybe next time try to find one half that size or one that you’ll use for all of that recipe.

When you put your waste into perspective, especially with cash money associated with it, it makes that much more of an impact on you.

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